Tibetans greet China's leaders with protest

Exiled Tibetans hold a portrait of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama while shouting slogans during a protest in solidarity with Tibetans who have self-immolated in Dharmsala, India, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012. Three teenage monks and a Tibetan woman set fire to themselves to protest Chinese rule on the eve of a pivotal Communist Party congress, activists reported Thursday, in what they said were the most such protests in a single day. (AP Photo/ Ashwini Bhatia)

BEIJING (AP) — Hundreds of Tibetans demonstrated in a western China town Friday, calling for freedom from Chinese rule in the latest act of protest apparently timed to send a signal to the Communist Party elite as it gathers in Beijing to induct a new leadership, witnesses said.

The protesters, mostly high school students, marched through the town of Rongwo, shouting for independence and for the return from exile of their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, according to residents and people visiting the town.

“It was chaos this morning,” said a Tibetan painter who lives nearby.

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The protest was the largest demonstration after days of growing tensions in the town, which sits at the edge of the Tibetan plateau and is dominated by the 600-year-old Rongwo Monastery.

A 22-year-old Tibetan farmer said protesters started gathering at about 4 a.m. near a local high school not far from the monastery and swelled into the thousands. He said the protests were led by hundreds of teenage students, who were joined by local farmers.

The painter and farmer both spoke by telephone on condition of anonymity out of fear of government reprisals.

Government offices in Rongwo, known as Longwu in Chinese, or the county overseeing it in Qinghai province either declined comment or did not answer telephone calls.

Police kept watch over the protest but did not immediately make any arrests, said an auto mechanic who would give only his surname, Ma.

The march also comes after five Tibetans set themselves on fire this week, two of them in the area near Rongwo. The immolations are the latest in more than 50 such acts over the past year that Tibetans said shows their growing desperation living under tighter religious and social controls imposed by China.

In Beijing, Tibetan Communist Party officials attending the party congress told reporters they believed much of the blame for the spate of self-immolations fell on the Dalai Lama and his associates, whom they said were instigating the protests.

“Everyone can see that these incidents are being manipulated by external Tibetan forces. They are calling the self-immolations heroic acts and making the self-immolators out to be heroes,” said Lobsang Gyaincain, the Chinese-appointed vice-governor of Tibet.

Gyaincain is in charge of “maintaining stability,” the party’s catchphrase for policing, surveillance and other efforts aimed at quashing unrest.

“The external Tibetan forces and the Dalai clique are sacrificing other people’s lives to attain their secret political motives,” Gyaincain said in response to a reporter’s question at a meeting of the region’s delegates to the party congress.

The official defended the party’s religious policies, saying the authorities protect religious freedom but that Tibetan temples and monks must undergo political and patriotic education.

Tibet support groups overseas said the uptick in protests in recent days is meant to highlight Tibetan unhappiness with Chinese rule as the country’s current leaders begin to hand over power to younger successors at a party congress in Beijing.